


A History of Wrong Guys (in ten parts)

by amutemockingjay



Category: Bob's Burgers (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Arson, Break Up, But when does she ever, F/M, Louise can't handle her feelings, Recovery, Revenge, This is completely self indulgent and I am not sorry, guess who's back I missed y'all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2018-11-15 19:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amutemockingjay/pseuds/amutemockingjay
Summary: Ten ways Louise does not deal with breaking up with Logan. Ten chapters with ten different vignettes in each one, a connecting thread of Louise and Logan's relationship, and maybe, just maybe, how they came back together, among other things. Unapologetic angst. Completely self-indulgent fic. I hold no apologies.





	1. The History of Wrong Guys

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!!! I missed y'all!! Due to the fact that Blue Cross can go suck a dick, I only spent three and a half weeks in inpatient eating disorder treatment. The rest is partial, and I'm trying my best. Please ignore the tense change in this, and tw for binge/purge content. I wrote this actually on assignment from my therapist, and a new chapter of Whispering is half-done, so keep your eyes peeled for that one! <3

I.

“I think we should break up.”

He doesn’t even have the balls to look her in the eye. She loves him and hates him and her world shatters.

II.

She decides on revenge. All those years ago, when he stole her bunny ears, she had exacted the perfect revenge. He had stolen a part of her, and in enacting revenge, she had gotten what she wanted. This time, there are no one-eyed snakes, and she wasn’t getting back the part he stole.

III.

She needed inebriated courage first. Normally, she didn’t need anything. But her hands were trembling as she unscrewed the cap on the bottle.

“Take it like a motherfucking lady,” she muttered as the liquor burned her throat, as the tears she refused to shed gathered in the corners of her eyes. Drink until she couldn’t feel the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears.

IV.

She wanted a rock, and there were only stupid pebbles. “Logan,” she hissed into the darkness, her tongue thick in her mouth. She could still taste the whiskey.

“What?” She could see his blonde hair in the light of the moon. “Oh, Louise.” His tone softened. “It’s you.”

“I hate you, and you’re the fucking worst, and you smell like lemons, and it’s weird.”

He blinked. “Louise, are you drunk?”

She stumbled out of his eyesight. “Fuck off.”

If she had the words, she’d give him hell. But she didn’t, and she did still ache.

V.

Rudy kissed differently from Logan. She hadn’t kissed Rudy since she was nine, over ten years ago. Thanks to his health, it was like kissing a cactus. An asthmatic cactus. His hands slipped under her shirt, and she slipped into the recesses of her own mind.

She faked coming, and he didn’t even notice.

VI.

“I can’t live with him. He’s a stupid fucker.” She was pacing back and forth in front of Jessica, smoking cigarette after cigarette from a pack she had bought at a gas station. She didn’t even smoke, but the nicotine made her head buzz.

Jessica spoke from beneath a curtain of red hair. “Do you think you can’t live with yourself?”

Louise lit a new cigarette off the butt of the old one. “I don’t know.”

 

VII.

There was no new girlfriend to torture, no one to hate, to throw every venomous thought towards. Destroy every aspect, make him feel the torn hammering beneath her ribs. She bought the gasoline at a convenience store, crinkling her nose at the smell as she walked in a circle around his royal blue sports car. At the age of twenty-five, he was obnoxiously successful. She lit the match and tossed it into the pool.

“Burn it down,” she whispered.

VIII.

The hunger came at midnight. The insatiable drive that had her half-running into the kitchen, her bare feet slamming against the floor, making a smacking sound that distracted her from her true purpose. Opening cupboards, boxes, the door of the fridge, she feels no guilt as she eats and eats and eats. Does she ever stop being hungry? Does it matter?

Chew, swallow, down another handful, sweet and salty melting into shame on her tongue, until she cannot taste anything but her own self-loathing. She picks herself up from the wreckage, stepping on wrappers as she stumbles towards the bathroom. Possessed as she sticks two fingers down her throat, hitting the gag reflex. She doesn’t know how she knows how to do this; she’s never done it before. She is better than this.

There is a knock on the bathroom. “Are you all right, Louise?”

Louise sinks onto the cold tile. Her mother. Of course.

“Fine,” she says. The word and the bile catch in her throat. “I’m just fine.”

VIV.

She is numb. She moves through tasks like a ghost, a pale imitation of herself, the barbs only half-stinging. She can see the concern in her father’s eyes, the way her clothes don’t fit right anymore. The dark circles under her eyes.

She is numb, and she hates herself even more as every day passes. She never lets herself fall apart because of a stupid boy. But has she ever let herself love before, either?

X.

She catches herself crying one day. Sinking down to the curb outside the restaurant, where she is supposed to be sweeping the sidewalk. Letting the broom clatter and crying so hard she thinks she will break from it. Snot running down her face, tears sticking her hair to her cheeks, the whole ugly scene. She doesn’t even have the energy to find self-loathing for this.

“Louise.”

Fuck. Logan is standing in front of her, holding a wrapped sandwich.

She doesn’t answer. She tries to, tries to come up with some sort of sick burn, and instead cries some more.

“You torched my car.”

She hiccups. “I’m not sorry.”

“You should be.” He holds out the sandwich. “Eat.”

“That better not be from Jimmy Pesto’s.”

“I’m not that evil.”

“We can go back and forth on that one.”

He proffers the sandwich again. “You’re too thin. Eat.”

She takes it. Grudgingly. “I’m not your problem, Bush.”

“You’re always my problem.”

“How romantic.” She takes a bite of the sandwich. He had gotten her favorite, the bastard.

“Louise, we weren’t working. We can’t work, not now. I don’t know if we ever can.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To give you this sandwich and tell you that maybe you don’t have to burn down my car?”

She took another bite. Why did things taste so good when you had been ravenous? She took another bite to prevent herself from having to answer.

“But I care about you,” he continues.

She feels as though she has been stabbed in the heart. She doesn’t want him to care, yet at the same time, she does.

“I don’t want to see you destroy yourself, Louise.”

“I wasn’t destroying myself,” she says vehemently. “I was getting revenge.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Louise, you gave yourself—“

She held up a hand. “You say it, and both of my hands will be ready for slapping.”

“Fine. Shut up and eat your sandwich, Belcher.”

She does, watching him as she chews slowly. She wants to hate him. She truly does. But she can’t, and she knows she can’t. All she can do is eat this sandwich, and maybe cry some more, and eventually get up off the curb.

And maybe that’s all she can ask for.


	2. A History of Wrong Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can't stop, won't stop, even if she can't burn down his car again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, y'all, I'm not even going to lie: I wrote this to deal with my own shit because writing is what keeps me marginally sane throughout this process. Her story is not my story--not in the details, not in all the behaviors. But her running is my running, from the same pain. Hence, self-indulgence. I tailored this precisely to her character, to how I feel she would struggle with this particular issue. She's not the vain type. But it's not really about vanity, and I hope that comes across here. 
> 
> CW/TW for bingeing and purging.

I.

There are calluses on her fingers. Two of them, in fact. She watches them in fascination, at the shiny red of broken skin, how the wounds are ripped open again and again by the back of her teeth. 

She should have shame, for what she’s doing. But shame is a foreign animal to her; it’s been that way since childhood. Half-baked plans that come out of impulsivity turned into calculation. Sometimes brilliant--scratch that,  _ always _ brilliant. It always starts with the impulse, the ever-present itch under her skin, the tingling at her palms. The potential is the chase, not doing good. Good is questionable. 

But so is sanity.

II.

She can’t get away with starving. Right after she burned down Logan’s car, she tried. Her mother wouldn’t allow for that, and Louise could live her entire life without her mother’s fussing and the sadness in her dad’s eyes. The sadness hammered away at her. Not enough to stop the race to the bathroom after meals. She’d deal with the twinges of guilt later. Not now. 

III. 

Her dad let her back onto the grill when she was thirteen. She suspected he didn’t trust her with fires, even then. She knew how to make burgers; any idiot could make a passable burger. But nobody could make a burger like her dad could. 

Biting her lower lip in concentration, she formed the patty, focusing on the flavors coming together, just like he taught her. All the ideas she’d had for Burger of the Day that she’d kept for years (and still believed were better than her dad’s). 

She wished she could bottle the pride in his eyes when she makes one worthy of the menu board. 

IV. 

She stops sleeping. 

Lying in bed at night, she doesn’t dare close her eyes because she knows she’ll see Logan. Her mind vacillates between memories of their first kiss, the date to Pancho’s Tacos where she’d given him shit for not going to the good one, the night she lost her virginity without thinking twice. Torture enough for dreams, where another girl appears, one she can never remember when morning blinds her. 

She sneaks out at night, taking the car and going anywhere there is food. Gas stations, convenience stores, grocery stores several towns over where she fills her cart and consumes in the car, puking in the woods. 

There is nothing dainty, acclaimed, about this. Nothing worthy of merit or achievement. But the hunger she felt that first night, the yawning in her chest at the loss, never quite goes away.    


V. 

She’s on the filthy floor of a gas station bathroom, wrappers in the trash in a large pile she doesn’t even want to think about. 

She doesn’t know what time it is. One, two am? Later? Earlier? Did it even matter at this point? Her throat burns; it’s been burning all the time now, especially when she has her glass of orange juice in the morning. That doesn’t stop her. It never does. 

She finishes; rinses out her mouth. Waves of dizziness undulate under her feet, but she tries to will the feeling away. Dizziness is weakness. She’s better than that bullshit. 

When she re-emerges, she sees a flash of blonde hair, a deep blue sports car. He’s pumping gas. She flattens herself against the wall, inching against the brick, praying to the God she doesn’t believe in that he won’t notice her. 

“Louise!” 

He approaches her, gets so close she can see the way his eyes change from blue to grey in this light, and she raises her hand to slap him. She tries to tell him to fuck off, to form the words that are stuck in the pathway between thoughts and speech. She opens her mouth, coughs blood all over his shirt, and blacks out. 

VI. 

Bright lights and a pressure on her hand. Sounds come in cracks, slipping between there--not there--loud, too loud. 

Her vision adjusts. An IV drip above her, a sensation she cannot begin to describe, of the liquid hitting her veins. 

“Louise?”

“I hate you,” she manages to croak. 

She waits for the barb back, for the insults they used to toss back and forth with ease. Her chest yawns and aches again. 

“You scared the shit out of me, Louise.” 

“Don’t tell my parents,” she says automatically. “Now when can I get out of here?” 

“They have a social worker coming to talk to you.” 

“What the hell?” She sits up, and the dizziness hits again. She sinks back onto the antiseptic pillow. 

His fingers trace the calluses on hers. “They told me about these. What they mean.” 

“They’re nothing. Knicked myself on the meat grinder.”

“You almost fucking died, Louise.” There’s an edge to his voice she doesn’t recognize. 

“Bullshit.”

“They doctor told me your potassium was so low you could have gone into cardiac arrest at any moment.”

“I’m fine, Logan. Why are you even here? Get out.” 

He interlaces their fingers. “You goddamn know why.”

VII. 

She doesn’t see him again after that night. That night changes nothing, other than her drives getting longer and longer, the towns getting more and more remote. 

Red-eyed at the grill, telling her dad the onions irritated her. He only nods, their conversations becoming few and far between. 

One one of her nighttime trips to the bathroom, she passes by her parents’ room, catching her name in their murmurs. She backtracks. 

“I heard her, Bobby. After dinner.”

“I...don’t know, Lin. She’s not exactly the type.” 

“Ginger says it’s not about that. Her daughter used to, she says. Got her to this place in Philadelphia.”

“Doesn’t that seem a bit, well, extreme? Philadelphia?” 

“You’ve gotta talk to her, Bobby.” 

“I really don’t know what to say, Lin.” 

:”It’s gotta be you. You know what would happen if I tried to.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll do it. But don’t expect me to like it.” 

She slips back into her room, wondering where she can get gasoline for a bright blue sports car. 

IX.

She lights a cigarette in the back alley, when she’s supposed to be taking out the trash. That day of chain-smoking immediately post-Logan had left her with an unfortunate craving. 

She leans up against the wall, blowing smoke, listening to the racoons scuffling over fries. 

“Louise?”

“Fuck,” she mutters under her breath, stomping out the cigarette. 

“I saw that, Louise.” Her dad joins her up against the wall. 

“Saw what?” She asks, a little too innocently. 

“The--never mind. We’ll talk about that later.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “God, it stinks back here.”

“We’re next to a dumpster, Dad.”

“Wanna go for a drive?” 

“Not really.”

“Correction: We’re going for a drive.” 

She takes this into consideration. She doesn’t really have a strong desire to gut punch her Dad, at least, not yet. “What about the lunch rush?”

“Your mom’s got it.” 

“Fine.”

She wants to turn on the radio as Bob navigates onto the thruway. She slumps down in her seat. In a strange way, she knows where they’re headed. She considers jumping out onto incoming traffic, the anger boiling up. She swallows it back down. It doesn’t swallow easily. 

“Louise.” He clears his throat. “Cutie pie.”

“I told you not to call me that ten years ago.”

“Right, uh.Right. Yeah.” He pulls at the collar of his shirt. 

She almost takes pity on him. Almost. She decides she wants him to suffer more instead. 

“I--we--I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What?” She asks, almost too sweetly. 

“Throwing up. It’s, uh, bad.” 

“Nobody likes puking, Dad. You got a problem you need to share with the class?” 

“No. But you do.”

She’s so shocked she can’t even think of an insult. Directness was not her dad’s specialty. Awkwardness was. 

“No idea what you’re suggesting.” 

“I’m suggesting you get help.” He fixes his gaze on her instead of the road. “Please.” 

“Do I have a choice?” 

“You always have a choice.”

“I didn’t when he left.”

“What?”

“What?”

She considers taking control of the wheel. She considers throwing something at him. And she considers what he’s saying. She considers if there is another way out. 

“Fine,” she spits. Her anger isn’t feigned, but it is expected, and he almost seems to have some kind of relief from it. 

She crosses her arms over her chest. This is going to be too easy. 

X.

It’s way out there, because of course it is. 

Bob gets lost, because of course he does. 

Shadows of leaves cut across asphalt. She narrows her eyes, forcing herself to take in every detail. Better than addressing the squirming feeling at the thought of being away from her family for so long. 

“You’re gonna do great.” 

“Don’t touch me,” she snaps when he leans in to give her a hug. 

She doesn’t watch his car drive past the speed bump that marks the edge of her prison. 

A staff member attempts to wrestle her Kuchi Kopi suitcase away from her. She pushes down the urge to scream creative obscenities. She has to bide her time. 

Raise hell. Destroy this place from the inside out. Come home and ruin Logan the way he ruined her.

It was so perfect; nobody would get in her way. 

Not even the half-hearted kicking of her own heart, yearning for him to hold her hand again. 

  
  



	3. A History of Wrong Colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Louise is in Equstranauts hell, and Logan creeps up in her thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working at this for a while as a good outlet for certain feelings. Comments are always appreciated, I know this is a departure from most Louise/Logan fic. I have enjoyed coming up with my headcanon for this though. The final vignette is partially pulled from my own experience at Renfrew, and partially pulled from the documentary Thin, which was filmed at the Renfrew I was at, fourteen years ago or so.

I.

She is in Equestranauts hell. Her so-called “roommate” has the bedspread. And the pillows. And the sheets. And the suitcase. Louise is pretty sure she spotted a Special Girl on the bedside table. 

Said roommate is sitting on the colorful bed, the ponies even more garish than Louise remembered. 

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Bryana.” 

“Get out of my face.” 

II.

She doesn’t cry. When she cried out on the curb that day, that day Logan brought her that sandwich, her pride took a beating. She’s better than that, she’s certain of it. 

She finds a spot of grass behind the manor house--yes, they called one of their buildings the manor house, like pretentious assholes--and smokes an illicit cigarette, looking up at the sky. 

She misses him. She wishes she didn’t, that she could rip out her heart. Boys were stupid, and she shouldn’t be losing her head over him, not like this. 

A sob gets stuck in her throat, tears at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over. She’d give anything to be sitting with him, resting her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. He made her feel like anything was possible. 

Love is an infection, she decides as the tears spill over. Not worth it. He’s not worth it. But that doesn’t stop the yearning, the void that she’s tried so hard to fill. Getting rid of the feelings on a bathroom floor. But nothing makes this go away. 

“Louise?” A strawberry blonde head peeks around the corner of the manor house. Bryana, the nightmare roommate. 

“Fuck.” She stubs out the cigarette and wipes her eyes. 

“It’s time for dinner.” 

She wishes she could punch Bryana, but she’d probably get stuck with some sort of punishment, and this is punishment enough. Plus she’d ruin the plans she’s been ruminating on since Bob drove away this afternoon. 

She picks herself up. She’ll find a way to purge anyway, so what did it really matter?

III. 

Dinner is a burger, salad on the side with balsamic dressing. 

She stares at her tray. “You have to be fucking kidding me.

“Louise, we don’t use language like that here.” One of the nurses, purple and white scrubs shiny and clean, admonishes her. 

“I hate all of you.” 

She has forty-five minutes for dinner. Her tray remains untouched. 

The nurse appears by her side with a mug of pink liquid. 

“What the hell is this?” 

“Supplement. If you don’t complete the meal within the allotted time, you get supplement. Two for less than 50% of the meal, one for greater than 50%.” 

She knocks the mug over and walks out of the dining room. 

  
IV.

She gets caught trying to walk out of sight, back to that sad excuse for a room after dinner. Bryana catches up to her on the moonlight path between the manor house and what they called the Pink House, where she had the misfortune to be kept prisoner. 

“You’re on green badge, Louise.” She points to the name badge around Louise’s neck which is, in fact, edged in green. 

“I like green. Your point?” 

“It means escorts. You’re not supposed to be anywhere besides the community room after meals.”

“You know where I need to be? Far away from you.” 

“It’s time for aftermeal.”

“If you don’t get out of my face in the next thirty seconds I’m gonna gut punch you.” 

Bryana’s face scrunches up and her lower lip trembles, as if she’s about to burst into heaving sobs. She turns and runs back up the path towards the manor house, and Louise swears she’s never been more grateful for anything in her life. 

Until Bryana emerges with one of the night staff, a dude at least a foot and half and 150 pounds heavier. 

If there was one thing she had learned over the years, it was how to cut her losses.   
V.

This has to be some form of hell. Sitting in a room full of other girls, as they talk about their feelings. One by one they sit in a circle, and “process” dinner. She crosses her arms over her chest. There is nothing to say, other than how much she wants to get out of here. Back to her routine, back to hating Logan, back to everything she held dear. 

She doesn’t want to stop. She can’t, even if she did want to. The compulsion digs under her skin, her nails, at the calluses on her two fingers. Though she’s only been doing this for a couple of months, not the pathetic creatures in here who have been up to tricks for years, she can’t comprehend continuing her life without bulimia. 

“Louise?”

She snaps back to her unfortunate reality. 

“What?” She snaps, her voice rising. 

“Anything you want to share about the meal?” The counselor, her hair pulled back with a butterfly clip, studies her. “I noticed you were struggling today.” 

Louise shoots them all the dirtiest look she can muster. 

“I hate all of you.” 

VI.  
  


The thoughts come at night, the memories that haunt her every night, the ones she tried to drown out purging in gutters, trash cans, bushes, and grimy bathrooms. 

She sorts in and out of a half sleep, wishing that she had never loved Logan Barry Bush. 

VII. 

She didn’t know how she stopped hating him. Twelve was not a flattering age for her. She only grew a few inches, but her hips widened and her favorite green dress fit all wrong, the pinching bra her mother dragged her out to get making everything stick out. 

She wants to hide, shrink. But instead, she starts fighting. Hauled into Mr. Frond’s office every day, his sigh of disappointment, another detention tacked onto her endless weeks. 

Ripped hands and black eyes and strong leg muscles, an angry sneer twisting her features into something foreign to her parents. 

Dad stays silent, not sure how to speak to her. Her mother tries to get her to talk about what hurts her, about boys, about periods. She wants none of it. She spends time in Tina’s room, watching her sister grow and shape and change from someone who is awkward to someone who almost has it together. Writing short stories for the literary journal, Zeke doting on her in that clumsy way of his. Tina doesn’t understand the fighting, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the only time the wildness inside Louise’s chest quiets and calms. 

She’s in the park when she sees him, picking herself up from getting her ass handed to her--she doesn’t always win. 

“Well, if it isn;t Four Ears.”

She tugs on the ends of her ears nervously. She’s been avoiding him since the shrimp incident three years ago. 

“Bush.”

“Belcher.”

“What do you want?”

“I just wanted to take a walk, but that got ruined.” He pauses. “You need ice.” 

“I’m fine.”

He holds his hand out to her. “Come on. I’ll get you cleaned up.”

Against her better judgment, she takes it. 

VIII. 

She’s hungry. She can’t help it. The ravenous hunger is back, striking her at her very core. As dawn breaks, she’s out of bed, and in the shower. 

Leaning up against the wall, letting the hot water run over her. Her head is pounding and she closes her eyes. She finds herself questioning how she’s going to get through this. With every tool she has taken from her. 

There’s a knocking at the door. 

“Louise? Can I shower?” 

She turns off the water, and sinks into a despair she has too much pride to admit exists.   
IX.

She stares at her perfectly balanced breakfast. She could scarf it all in five minutes. She has been told she is on a level system, that she is on trays, which means she must sit at a separate table, have her food portioned for her, that she must eat all her food to be moved up and given more independence. The word independence tugs at her. She has to. She has to get out of here. 

She picks at her scrambled eggs. One bite at a time. Try to be normal, not some kind of head case. 

Her plate is clear and she wants nothing more than to run away. 

X.

She’s sitting on a couch, like some sort of cliche. The walls are decorated with some kind of Art Noveau bullshit. With cats. Ugh. 

The therapist has an undercut. Dressed in a close cut man’s suit. She may have a nose stud. Hard to tell at this angle. 

“Louise,” she says. “I get the sense that there are things that you carry inside you that are literally unspeakable. Unspeakable. That you only know how to express these things through bingeing and purging.”

Despite herself, she is nodding. Her voice is deadly quiet, her gaze fixed. “Why, then, should I tell you?”


	4. A History of Wrong Loves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She never asked for him, and he didn't write the rules for leaving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I know it's been two months since I updated, but that's because, in a twist of irony, I ended up in residential treatment for my eating disorder and was gone from mid-September till now. Luckily I'm doing much better and will be returning to a more regular update schedule for both this fic and Whispering. Thank you so much for your patience and support!

I. 

She’s sitting in the community room after lunch, that stupid escorts thing screwing up all her plans. 45 minutes of hell, and purging was so much harder after that time passed. Tugging on her ears, she stares at the TV, bored. They’re watching some crap on MTV, and she’d much rather be watching an action movie. Maybe horror. Something with blood or car chases. 

One of the counselors pokes her head into the community room. “Louise?”

“What?” She snaps. 

“You have a visitor.”

She gets up, curious. Maybe it was her Dad, though she can’t imagine he’d be able to leave the restaurant much. 

As soon as she reaches the hallway, she stops in her tracks. 

“Logan.” 

  
II.

He has the wherewithal to show up. She wants to scream at him, tell him to leave her alone. That she hated him, hated him for what he had done to her, what excruciating pain she was in.  There was another part, though. A desire to run into his arms, to tell him everything, to sit in the grass while he ran his fingers through her hair, just like he used to. 

“Hey,” he says softly. 

Her thoughts in a tangle, her mouth not obeying. She isn’t ready to talk, but she can’t stay in this hallway for a second more. 

“Outside,” she manages to say. 

“Okay,” he replies. 

She can’t read the look in his eyes. She’s not sure if she wants to. 

She finds a tree behind the manor house; fights the urge to climb it and stay far away from him. She turns to him, her brown eyes burning into him. 

“Why are you here?”

III. 

He tosses her a pack of cigarettes, the kind she likes. She catches it deftly. 

“You came all the way here to bring me cigarettes?” Not that she’s not grateful; she’s down to half a pack, and her parents didn’t exactly know of her newfound vice that was Logan’s fault anyway. 

“Not really,” he says. He brushes back his bangs, and she notices that his hands are shaking. 

“Then why the hell are you here, Logan?”

He licks his lips, and she stares into his blue eyes, wanting to hate them more than anything, but her heart beats faster and she knows, she knows without saying it, that she still loves him. 

“I came to see you,” he says, slowly, as if she’s dumb. 

She flares instantly. “What do you think I am, stupid?”

“God damn it, Louise, no. Don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer to it.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snaps. She pulls a cigarette out of the pack and lights it. 

He reaches for her free hand. She flinches, and pulls away. She hates herself for feeling that same spark that she had felt at fifteen, when he had kissed her for the first time. 

“I guess I deserve that,” he said quietly. 

“I didn’t burn your car for no reason.” 

“Still pissed about that, you know.” 

“Like I care.”

“Louise.” His voice has a pleading quality she hasn’t heard in a long time. “Please don’t do this.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She blows smoke in his face, and he coughs. 

“I can’t stand to see you the way I did that night.”

“I’m not sick.”

“You coughed blood all over my shirt.”

She shrugs her shoulders and stamps out the butt of the cigarette. 

“Just, stay. Please.” He holds out his arms to her, and against her better judgment, she falls into them. 

  
  
IV.   
  


He’s warm and she’s cold. She’s always cold now, which doesn’t make sense to her, it only reminds her of when she was little--whenever she was sad, she had the chills. He’s warm and she’s cold and she wishes her heart didn’t ache with every beat of his. 

V.

He presses a kiss to the side of her head. She wrenches away. 

“What are you doing?”

He doesn’t let go of her. “Staying here with you.”

“You’re not allowed.”

“What?”

She sits up, tugging her ears back on. “You don’t get to write the break up rules, Logan. Not when you were the one--” She swallows. 

“The one who hurt you,” he finishes the sentence quietly. 

She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not hurting.”

“Then why the fuck are you here, and why did I have to buy a new Jaguar?” 

“Maybe I just want to do this, Logan. Maybe this is the life I want.” 

“You want to be puking your guts out in a gas station bathroom at two am?” 

“Yes!” She stands up, curling her hand into a fist. She’s close to decking him. 

He rises to meet her, but, of course, he towers over her. Damn him and his tallness. 

“What happened to you? What happened to the Louise I knew?” 

“She died,” she screams. “She’s dead and you can’t have her back!” She finds herself running, tripping over her feet, looking for somewhere, anywhere. That’s when she spies the bush. 

VI.   
  


On her knees, like always. Fingers in her mouth, down her throat. Her body convulses with the violence of it, with the acid that burns her raw throat. 

“Louise!” 

Suddenly he’s next to her, his arms around her waist. 

“Fuck off, Logan,” she screams, swinging blindly, ready to fight. 

“No,” he says, quietly. “I won’t.” 

“I hate you.”

“I won’t let you do this. Please. Please stop.”

“No!” She breaks out of his grip and runs out of sight, back to the pink house, wishing with all of her heart that she had never loved Logan Barry Bush. 

VII. 

At twelve, she had been a wild thing, and he hadn’t tried to tame her. 

He’d taken her out to milkshakes, driving in his car way too fast, windows rolled down as she screamed along to the classic rock on the radio. Ranting till she had no voice, as he had listened, fists propping up his chin. 

She didn’t know why he listened, why he let her tag along. Laughing till their sides split, her breath coming in short pants. Ignoring the confusion of her parents--how could she befriend someone she had claimed as her archenemy? 

Fifteen. She wanted to ignore the stirrings. It was stupid, she was stupid, the longing she felt was stupid. Lying on the living room floor, watching TV, she rolls over and kisses him, and nothing is the same. 

VIII. 

She wants to forget the taste of him. His kisses, the sweat on his skin when they fucked, the mint after thought of his toothpaste. 

Instead, she tastes ashes and bile and hates herself. 

IX.  
  


She almost forgets the cigarettes. Bolting out of the pink house, she runs like her ass is on fire towards the spot with Logan. She finds them there, between the tall blades of grass, but he is nowhere to be seen. She can’t decide, really, if she wishes he were or not.

X. 

Lighting up, wiggling her bare feet into the dirt. That first drag of poison is the sweetest, the relief flooding her system. 

“You’re not supposed to be doing that.” Byranna’s voice. Of course. 

Louise blows smoke. “Do you really think I care?” 

“Not really.” 

“Then go away.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Ugh.” Louise takes another drag. “You remind me of someone I’d rather forget.” 

“You remind me of someone I’d rather forget, too.”

“Then why are you sticking around?”

Bryanna shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. Why are you still purging?”

Louise takes a final drag. “None of your goddamn business.”

“I won’t tell.”

“What?”

“I won’t tell. You think I want to be here any more than you do?” 

“I don’t know, and I don’t care to know.”

“He looked sad.”

“What?”

“The boy visiting you. He was crying.”

Louise wished her heart didn’t squeeze tight with those words. “He can cry till he can’t breathe, and frankly, I don’t give a damn.” 

“Can I sit?”

Louise stamped out the cigarette. “For five minutes.”

The next five minutes were the most peace she’d had in the past three months, and somehow, she wasn’t sorry for it. 


	5. A History of Wrong Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She still can't find a way to talk about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. So I know it's been a while on this fic, but I'll admit this one is a bit more difficult for me to write because although my story is not the same as hers, a lot of the feelings are, so the words do not come easily to this one, hence the abbreviated style.

I. 

Five am. 

Up before the sunrise, shuffling to the small room in the pink house set aside for weights and vitals. Hospital gown, arms wrapped around the body in the cold--when has she ever been so cold? 

She steps on the scale, the number flashing in front of her. The number has never mattered, only getting rid of the food. Only filling the emptiness inside her, and then returning to that state, to the numbness. 

The other girls, they freak. They cry, they yell, and Louise is silent. 

Louise is silent, and tries not to think of him.

II. 

Pudgy hands wrapped around her wrist, eyes on the clock. Again. And again. 

“Pulse deficit.” The nurse gives her a searching look. Louise shrugs her shoulders. “Have you been purging?”

“No.” The lie slips off her tongue with ease. 

The nurse makes a note. She is ushered out. Next patient, next patient. Louise is left blinking in the hallway, wondering what the hell had just happened. 

III. 

The name badge is in her therapist’s hands. Red, instead of green. Not that Louise did anything in therapy that was worthy of note, other than being a professional time waster. 

“This is bullshit!” On the tips of her toes, screeching. 

“We’re keeping you on partial dayroom to keep an eye on you. Think of it as a chance to prove yourself, Louise.” 

“I don’t need to prove anything! I’m fucking fine! I don’t have a problem!” 

“If you didn’t have a problem, you wouldn’t be here. Your body is trying to tell you something. The electrolyte imbalances, the coughing blood, perforated esophagus, pulse deficits. You’re harming yourself with your bulimia.” 

“Maybe I want to!” The words had slipped past her filter so quickly she didn’t have a chance to stop them. 

“What, exactly, are you trying to prove?” 

And Louise didn’t have an answer.

IV. 

Being stuck in the dayroom for twelve hours a day is a new circle of hell. Even her goddamn annoying roommate had more freedom to move. 

She huddles under a blanket, eyes closed, trying to tune out the world. Wondering what they were up to at the restaurant. A twinge of guilt that she wasn’t there to help her dad, especially now that Tina and Gene were gone. 

She tugs on the ends of her ears. Eternal screw-up. How had she ended up here? 

It all came back to him. Tears threatened, and she rubbed her eyes, the cry caught in her throat. She had only broken down the once. Never again. 

“Louise?” A nurse pokes her head into the dayroom. “You have a message from the front desk.” She handed the nineteen-year-old a folded slip of paper. 

Louise opens it with trepidation. Takes in the scrawled cursive. 

‘I’m sorry. Please call me. --Logan’

She crumples the paper and aims it at one of the other girls, a blonde with ringlets. 

“Ow!” The girl cries as the paper hit her in the face. “That was a sharp corner.” 

Louise barely notices.

V. 

“Eating disorder behaviors are often a result of emotional avoidance.” Therapist, hair in a fishtail braid, attempts to instruct a room of bored girls. “Often, the avoidance of feelings creates a more fear-based reaction that escalates response. But if you ride the wave of emotion, you’ll find the feeling passes far faster.”

Louise rolls her eyes. The one time she’d allowed herself to feel the pain of what Logan had done to her, she wanted to die. She was not eager to repeat the experience. 

“You won’t die of your feelings, ladies.” The therapist’s eyes bore into Louise’s. “But your disorders will kill you.”

VI. 

Ten minutes. That’s all the time the dayroom patients have for phone calls per day, in the phone booth. Louise hesitates over the sign-up sheet, then puts her name down. 

Palms sweating, she dials the number through her calling card. 

“Hello?”

She hangs up at the sound of his voice, heart beating erratically, certain that she’s going to collapse in this tiny space, carpeted walls closing in on her. 

VII. 

He refused to lay a hand on her until she was eighteen. He’d kiss her, in those three years, but never more than that. 

Her eighteenth birthday, she shows up with a bottle of wine stolen from the cellar, the little stash that Linda thinks Bob and the kids know nothing about. An ill-kept secret. 

They pass the bottle back and forth, and she’s not drunk but she’s warm, close to him. 

The kissing turns into something more, and as he presses up against her, hardness in his jeans against her thigh, he whispers in her ear how much he loves her. 

It’s a cliche, to admit that she’s changed after it’s over. 

But not wrong--she never thought she could love him more until that moment, until she falls so completely into him that she knows there’s no turning back. 

VIII. 

She’s in no-purge hell. Toilets checked, bathroom in her room locked. She stares at the pasta salad in front of her. The thought of leaving the food in her, with no way out, is too much to bear. 

She pushes the food away, unfinished. 

Damn if she’s not hungry, though.

IX. 

The phone in the booth rings. 

“Louise, it’s for you!”

Dread sits in her stomach, her leg muscles clenched as she walks to the phone. Her breathing is heavy. It had to be him. She’s not ready for this. Maybe she never will be. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, sweetie!” Her mom’s voice echoes through the booth and Louise never thought she’d actually be grateful to hear from her. 

“Hey, Mom.” She tries to keep her tone neutral. She’s been practicing. 

“How’s it going up there?” 

“It’s...going.” That is certainly a way to describe it. 

“Great. Well, your dad and I thought we’d come up next Saturday, do a little visiting. Do you need us to bring anything with us?”

“Cigarettes.” 

“What?”

“Uh, just joking, Mom! Ha ha so funny, as if I smoke!” 

Linda laughs her annoying laugh, and Louise finds herself missing her. Not that she’d ever say as much. 

“Just know we’re so so proud of you for getting help.”

Louise’s smile is tight. She rarely, if ever, feels guilty for what she does, but this is different. How much are her parents struggling, trying to pay for this? Shit. Suddenly, she’s suffocating. 

“Sorry, Mom, I’ve gotta go.”

“All right, honey, see you on Saturday.”

“See ya.” 

Even hiding in her corner in the day room, her hands don’t stop shaking.

X. 

She can’t look her therapist in the eyes. Picking at the edge of a blanket, braiding the fringe. 

“Something on your mind, Louise?”

As if there wasn’t. As if he wasn’t on her mind all hours of the day. 

She takes a deep breath. She wants to say the words. She wants to let this burden out of her, somehow. And now that her purging has been taken from her, she doesn’t know how. 

She licks her lips, trying to make the words come. Instead, she finds herself asking a question she hadn’t dared think on. 

“How do you know if you’ve met the person you’re supposed to be with?” 


	6. A History of Wrong Direction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louise, you have a visitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I go back and forth between this one sporadically as my recovery progresses. My recovery, much like this fic, is under construction, and Louise grows and changes with me. Thank you for all your support. <3

I.

The burden is killing her, she’s sure of it. Her chest hurts, spanning into her limbs, freezing her, making her head buzz and swim. She sits in the dayroom and she feels like she’s cracking into a thousand tiny pieces. She hangs onto the edge of the couch.

What had happened to her? What happened to the girl that slapped Regular-Sized Rudy after her first kiss?

She blinks, looks around at the other sad souls around her, stuck in dayroom hell. Looks down at her nails, bitten down in an effort to keep herself from purging. The scars on her knuckles, from her nights of bulimia back home.

A flash of memory: the Boyz for Now concert, ten years ago. When she had looked in the mirror, tugging on her pigtails, wondering who the hell she was, unable to recognize her own reflection.

Now she stares at her body, and wonders exactly who she’s become.

II. 

Take two, the phone booth. Her hands are trembling so badly that she can barely dial the number.

“Hello?”

She is ripped in half at the sound of his voice.

“Logan.” The bile is in the back of her throat.

“I’d really like to talk to you, Louise.”

“I have ten minutes.” she tries to be cold, tries to block everything out, and she can’t. Her need is raw and she hates herself for it.

“I can come up again,” he offers. “Do you need more cigarettes?”

“I smoke the lights.”

“Sunday?”

Her chest lurches. “Okay.”

“I need you to promise me something, Louise.”

Anything, she wants to say. But she can’t, she won’t. “What?”

“That you’ll stay. And listen. And talk.”

She needs out. She can’t breathe. “I have to go,” she says. “My minutes are up.”

His voice takes on a pleading tone she hasn’t heard before. “Promise me, Louise.”

“Fine,” she snaps.

“Say you promise.”

The words feel heavy on her tongue. “I promise.”

III.

A white slip of paper in her hands.

“You’re moving to the main residence,” the counselor tells Louise.

She doesn’t have much to pack, grateful to be out of Equestranauts hell. Hauling her Kuchi Kopi suitcase up the hill to the main building, second floor. The first thing she sees is her roommate’s bedside table. A Kuchi nightlight, just like the one she had at home.

A girl with auburn hair sits on the edge of the bed. She’s thin, too thin, her collarbones sticking out. There’s a brief pang of jealousy, thinking of her moment of starving before the food consumed her.

“You’re my roommate?” There’s suspicion in the girl’s voice.

“Yeah.” Louise kicks off her boots. “I’m Louise.”

“Lexie,” the girl says. She takes in Louise’s suitcase. “You like Kuchi Kopi?”

Louise nods. “I have the same nightlight at home.”

“Where are you from?”

“Seymour’s Bay.”

Lexie’s green eyes go wide. “Shut up. I thought I was the only one.”

Louise hesitates as she unpacks her clothes. If she said she liked Jimmy Pesto’s, Louise would be forced to move out. There would not be any other way. And, of course, there was the matter of what side of town she lived on. Logan’s side of town had never been a place where she belonged.

“My aunt owns the aquarium,” Lexie offered.

“Wait, your aunt is Judy? The one who married the IRS guy?”

“How’d you know that?”

Louise hesitates. “Uh, that’s a story.”

“Where do you live?” Lexie asks, braiding back her thinning hair.

“Near the Wharf. My parents...we have a restaurant.”

Lexie wrinkles her nose. “I don’t eat down there much. I got food poisoning from a place there, you know Jimmy Pesto’s?”

“Fuck Jimmy Pesto’s.”

“Yeah, I felt that way after the jalapeno poppers Incident.”

Louise finds herself grinning. Not at Lexie’s misfortune, but because for the first time since her dad dropped her off, she doesn’t feel so alone.

IV. 

“Mind if I sit?” Lexie holds her tray.

Louise nods. The debate rages full throttle in her head--to eat, or not to eat.If she eats, she can’t purge. If she doesn’t eat, the black hole inside her rages less. But she’s so hungry…

She picks up her fork, then puts it down again.

“Having a hard time?” Lexie asks. “I hate salad day.”

Louise doesn’t say anything, picks up the fork again. Puts it back down.

“It’s bullshit,” Lexie says through a mouthful of croutons. “So much bullshit piled up onto one plate to meet exchanges. Not enough time to eat it. Feels like I’m just shoveling food into my mouth.”

“Do you ever?” The words are out of Louise’s mouth without thinking. Lexie had to be anorexic. Not like her.

“Sometimes.” Lexie takes another bite. “To get out of here. And,” she drops her gaze, twirling her fork between her fingers, “Binge-purge subtype.”

“Never would have thought,” Louise comments, still staring at her salad.

“Nobody did.” Lexie grins. “That’s how I got away with it.”

Louise stabs a piece of lettuce, She liked being able to get away with it, the hours spent, the obsessing that kept her from falling into heartbreak.

Too bad she had already fallen.

V. 

Her dad sits on the steps outside the residence, weak sunshine falling on both of them. Linda disappeared to ask the doctors something, and the air hangs heavy between father and daughter.

Louise doesn’t know how to bridge the gap with him, that she’s spent months hiding, running, hurting herself, and he had no idea. She had changed fundamentally, and hid her darkness from the person she always wanted to be.

Bob looks at his nails, and Louise follows suit with her bitten down ones.

“Louise?”

“Yeah?”

“Why?”

She pauses, exhales. Gazes up at the sky. “You ever shatter into a million pieces?”

“No?”

“That’s why.”

He puts his hand on top of hers. “I don’t understand. But I want to be there.”

The guilt weighs her down even more than the longing for the bulimia and to be somewhere, anywhere, than here.

VI. 

Sunday, she’s a wreck. Picks at her food, stares at the clock in her never-ending penance. Though she was allowed outside for her parents’ visit, non family visits are confined to her prison, at least while she’s on restriction.

The counselor appears at the top of the stairs, but beyond her, Louise can spot a familiar mop of blonde hair. He never managed to comb it right.

“Louise, you have a visitor.”

Her hands grip the bottom of her armchair, muscles taut. Stomach roiling, bitters in her mouth.

“Logan,” she says. She curls into herself, and hates herself for it. Where was the girl she once was? What had happened to her?

“Hey.” He stands, looking at her. From across the room, Louise can feel Lexie’s eyes on her, doing the same penance. “Can I sit?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Okay.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “God, I can’t believe you’re here.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“How long?” He deflects the question, maddening her.

“Six months,” she replies. “Since you ended things.”

“Before or after the car?”

“Will you leave the goddamn car alone?”

“It was a nice car, Louise.”

She can’t look at him. “I don’t see why it matters.”

“It does. You matter.”

“Maybe you should have rethought that before breaking up with me.”

“I think you misunderstood me, Louise.”

Her heart, her traitorous heart, stops. “What?”

“You’re independent. It’s one of the things I’ve loved about you. But you said you didn’t see a future with me.”

“That’s not what I said!” her voice raises and Lexie’s head snaps up.

“Then what the hell did you mean?”

“I’m nineteen, Logan. I said I couldn’t see myself being married. There’s a goddamn difference and you don’t end a relationship over it.” Or did you? She tried to think of her life without Logan, and had come up with this, instead. What a mess.

“I bought a ring. Before you said that.”

In one sentence, everything she’s known falls apart.

VII.

Louise Belcher isn’t the marrying type. Never has been, never will be. She’s a lone agent, she keeps Regular-Sized Rudy in more trouble but out of enough to keep out of detention, looks out for the Chloes of the world. She never expected to fall, and especially not for Logan.

Suddenly she’s greater than herself. Suddenly she’s not herself. Suddenly, she’s part of a pair. Louise-andLogan. We. Us.

Until she’s standing alone that night, and her life crumbles before her eyes.

Staring up at Logan, in virtual prison, throat and body marred, she realizes it: Louise Belcher lost herself long before the bulimia. And she wants a way back.

VIII.

There’s little left to say to Logan, left with more questions than answer. She tells him she needs the time apart. When his shadow departs, she feels lighter than she’s felt in a long time. And that’s how she finds herself in a phone booth, reaching for the only lifeline she knows.

“Rudy?”

“Louise? This isn’t your number.”

“I know. My dad--well, I’m in Philadelphia.”

“Visiting? I know I haven’t been home but I’m coming back for summer break.”

“Kind of. I’m in treatment.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” her voice breaks. “Rudes, I don’t know who I am anymore. I think…” The tears are flowing down her cheeks. “I think I need help.”

“I’m there.”

IX. 

“How do you get over someone?” They’re sitting on the smoke porch, mosquitos flying lazily above them.

In the matter of economics, they trade drags off of Louise’s cigarette, Lexie and her, breaking the rules of one cigarette per patient. Lexie doesn’t smoke much anyway, she says.

“Believe me, if I knew, I’d be the first to tell you.”

Louise exhales a plume of smoke. “How’s that for fucking enlightenment.”

X.

She’s unmoving. It’s like she’s in a dream, still on restriction, the days passing, the urges growing within her but so is the resolve. The weekend comes, another week gone, her team shaking their heads, but she knows. She knows that there’s something shifting inside her, something she can’t name.

Then, the nurse pokes her head in. “Louise, you have a visitor.”

She leaps to her feet so quickly she gets dizzy, her body lighting up with warmth. “Rudy!”


	7. A History of Wrong Urges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regular-Sized Rudy knows her in a way that others don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hello I apologize that this took forever. I've fallen in and out of some mini relapses with my anorexia, though I can report I've been bulimia free for four months now! Writing this fic is so deeply personal to me (even if I didn't go to this treatment location that this fic is based on, I went to their Florida one last year lol) that it comes in stops and starts and has changed as I have moved through my recovery.

I. 

Regular-Sized Rudy is still an asthmatic, and Louise makes an effort to keep him far away from the smoking porch. Still doesn’t escape his notice. 

“You stink,” he says. 

“Thanks.”

“When did you start smoking?” 

“It kind of happened by accident? I was trying to get over Logan.” 

Rudy blinks, takes in the dayroom. “I don’t think it’s working.” 

Louise leans up against him, dark head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what happened.” 

He reaches for her hand. “How did you end up here?” 

Louise pauses. Squeezes his hand. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

II. 

She wants to let him into her dark corners. He’s Rudy, he’s been by her side for years, he knows her as well as anyone. With his rough hand in hers, she wonders if she can. 

“I know it sounds disgusting.” 

“Louise, you told me you ate your own boogers when we were in the fourth grade. I’m not here to judge you. Never have been.” 

She presses her lips against the side of his head, right at the temple. He’s the only person she allowed herself to be physically affectionate with, except Logan. 

“I really miss it. Throwing up. I miss it so goddamn fucking much. I’m going batshit without it. I swear I think I’m insane.” 

“Okay,” he says, and that’s what she loves so much about Rudy. He accepts her as is, flaws out in open, flayed and raw. 

She buries herself in his shoulder. And, for the first time in a long time, she cries. 

III.

He holds her. He holds her while she sobs. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t try to make it better. He just lets her cry. 

Eventually, it ebbs, and she looks up at him, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. 

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

IV. 

Rudy spends the weekend. Not at the treatment center, but outside it, and gets a ride to and from. She finds herself aching for the visiting hours, for the moment when he enters the community room, and the knot within her eases. 

He also brings her cigarettes. She can’t help but laugh at the image of the short asthmatic going to the gas station and buying a couple of packs. 

Maybe this place really has made her insane. 

V.

She isn’t cured, by his visit, by her tears. She knows it doesn’t work that way. But goddamnit, she is hungry, her strike over as she sits next to Lexie, shoveling food into her face like she has forgotten what it was. 

“Jesus, slow down before you choke.” Lexie is struggling with her sweet potatoes. Louise doesn’t blame her. Sweet potatoes are gross. 

“Sorry.” Louise takes a breath. “I just forgot how _ good _ food tastes.” 

“Yeah, it’s like when you start eating again, anything tastes amazing, even shit.” 

“Not Jimmy Pesto’s.”

Lexie stabs a sweet potato. “Valid.”

VI. 

She is outside the dining hall on a bench, shaking from head to toe. “I want to throw up so bad. I want to throw up so bad I can’t stand it.”

“I know,” Lexie says. A counselor sits next to her, offers a box of tissues. Because much to Louise’s own surprise, she is crying, the tears streaming down her cheeks. 

She is on her feet, pacing, manic, hair flying out of her messy braids. “I can’t do this. I can’t.” 

“Breathe,” The counselor says. 

“I know how to fucking breathe!”

“I mean it. Take a moment. Stop pacing, and take five deep breaths.”

Louise stops pacing, and takes the breaths, her nails digging into the palms of her hands. But she breathes. She pauses. And the tears dry up. 

“Fighting the urges is like working a muscle. It sets precedent. Every time you get through a meal without purging, you know that you’ve done it in the past and can do it again,” says the counselor. 

Louise isn’t sure wants to. She’s still skeptical about the concept of recovery as a whole. But Lexie looks so encouraging, and she knew the only way out of this hell was to stop. Stop bingeing and purging. 

So, she takes another breath. 

VII. 

In her therapist’s office, on the couch again, laying down because she’s a cliche and she’s tired, so tired. Glancing over at her therapist, who is waiting, patiently. 

“Can I tell you what happened?” The question is barely a whisper. 

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that.” 

VIII. 

God, it hurts. It hurts so goddamn much. She is raw, a nerve that slips in and out of focus, the world all together too much. She looks out the window of the day room, longing to feel the fresh air, longing to be out in the world. 

He was her first love. But would he be her last? Could she ever get over him? Did she want to? He had bought her a ring. He had bought her a fucking ring. She wasn’t ready. Would she ever be?

IX. 

When it’s her time to use the phone, she punches in the number she has memorized. He might not pick up. 

“Hello?”

“Dad? I know it’s the dinner rush--”

“It’s fine. What do you need?”

A million thoughts flood her mind. She needed him to be a dad. And he was, he always was, it wasn’t his fault that she kept this from him. But where could she start? 

“Do you have some time?”

X. 

She manages to keep her food down for a week straight, in between all the tears. She swears it’s the hardest thing she’s ever done, but she isn’t expecting the green badge in her therapist’s hands. 

The second she’s given freedom, she tastes the air, the Philadelphia greenery lush around her. She revels in the freedom, in the sweetness of being able to sit in the grass, to move around the grounds on breaks. 

And as she sits on the stairs of the main residence, looking out to the rolling hills beyond, she wonders if she’s starting to heal, despite herself. 


End file.
